


The Price We Pay

by nimrodcracker



Category: Mass Effect
Genre: Gen, Somebody Lives/Not Everyone Dies, ridiculous odds
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-07-29
Updated: 2015-07-29
Packaged: 2018-04-11 21:36:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,086
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4453253
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nimrodcracker/pseuds/nimrodcracker
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I grew up on this side of London, along the Thames and beside the skyscrapers that pierced the clouds. If nothing changes in the next hour, it's where I'm about to die, too.</p><p>(aka - two Alliance marines versus a rampaging Reaper horde)</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Price We Pay

I used to think that a groundside posting was the shittiest thing that could happen to me.

After all, it was nothing like what the recruitment posters said: wake up, have breakfast with the squad, weapons drills and PT, walking circles around a specific plot of land, have dinner, hit the showers, lights out. Rinse and repeat. Day in, day out.

 _Join the army!_ , the recruiters crowed back then. _See the galaxy! Explore new cultures!_. What a load of crock. All I got was sightseeing around London, until I was intimately acquainted with the various cracks in the pavement.

But that was before the sun was blotted out by thousands of machines, falling from the sky like toxic rain. And when that happened, I didn't think I could miss my boring, shit-arse groundside posting that much.

~~~~  
  
A voice crackled over the squad frequency, tinny in my helmet's speakers. "Chief, that's the last of them."

"Copy that, Bull. Get your arse over here and keep your head down."

Even before the connection ended, I was already peeking over the overturned bench I hid behind for a confirmatory visual. True enough, the barrel-chested marine was weaving through debris and bombed-out craters with a limp form slung over his shoulder.

Corporal Hendricks Hasano was that marine's name, a heavy guns specialist without a guns emplacement to use. I knew him since Basic two years ago, and I couldn't decide if it was good fortune that we've always ended up working together, by being in the same unit or otherwise.

Ever since the Reapers descended on London, it was the former.

I glanced around, diligently taking stock of our surroundings. Over the course of weeks, my squad had carved out an outpost from ruins of an apartment building, barricading the path leading to it with an assortment of overturned benches and concrete blocks.

Our last standing orders from Command were to set up and hold a position some two kilcks south of Forward Operations HQ, but I fear that we've only built ourselves our tomb.

The muffled _thump-thump_  of heavy footfalls drew my gaze to Bull, headed for me with a smirk on his scarred features - a reassuring one, perhaps. Why he preferred wearing a Kuwashii visor over a proper helmet, I would never understand.  
  
I jerked a gloved thumb behind me, eyes still sweeping across the plaza. "I know the rest of the mates would appreciate a final reunion. I've arranged them together with what's left of our munitions."

Bull grunted a noncommittal as he ascended the steps, before disappearing into the cubby-hole behind me. He reappeared moments later with his beloved M-99 Sabre, joining me on the steps leading to the building's front doors. He took up a position behind a bench beside mine.

With another pair of eyes scanning the wide expanse of terrain, a bit of fatigue-induced tension seeped out of me. How many days had it been without proper sleep?

The harsh beam of the Conduit in the distance burned bright against the blackness of the sky, and my eyes watered even from behind my tinted visor. "Outpost Bridge to Ops Centre. Request for reinforcements, Hellfire squad strength down to two," I said over the helmet's comm, omnitool running a frequency-enhancing program. "I repeat, Hellfire squad in need of reinforcements at Outpost Bridge. Ops Centre, come in."

Only static greeted me, and the rock in my gut sank further.

"Give it up, Av." My breath hitched at the uncalled-for nickname.

 _Av_. Would I ever hear someone call me that again?

Bull continued, unaware. "HQ's probably having it worse than us, if they can't even keep their comm channels working."

Suddenly it felt earth-shatteringly difficult to sit upright. "Yeah," I ground out, shaking my head, fingers curling tightly on the handgrip of my Vindicator. "Of course."

Dreary. Everything was dreary, in the perpetual storms in London's skies, to the near darkness of the streets broken up only by the smattering of lampposts flickering their dying lights like a timer counting down to our demise.

Something wailed in the distance. Fear spiked in my chest. I stood and brought up my rifle to bear - aiming, pointing at shadows lurking behind stumps of trees and rocks all across the plaza but there weren't any Reaper troops around.  
  
In the tense silence that followed, I didn't know I could tremble without chattering my teeth.

A weight settled on the shoulderpad of my hardsuit. I glanced askance, discovering that the weight belonged to Bull's hand. "Hey," he murmured, tilting his head towards our cubby-hole. "Get some shut-eye. You've been pulling longer shifts than I have."

I was about to deny, insisting that _I'm a soldier, it's what I'm trained for_  but I knew he was right.

That killed the denial in my throat, but not the growing prickling of the hairs on the back of my neck.

"I'd like to, Bull. I really do," I said, nestling back to a crouch and resting the Vindicator's muzzle on the lip of the bench. "But it feels like something's about to happen, and I'd rather not be caught napping in the den."

He knew better than to spit on battlefield intuition, and I was glad for that.

My lips were cracking - heck, throat drier still - and I fumbled for a hydration tube in my belt pouch, only to find one.

Bull side-eyed me as I rolled the cylinder between my fingers, the dirt on the plastic casing smudging those on my gloves. He wasn't looking at me, though. His eyes were fixed on the tube I held.

"Bull." I tossed over the cylinder and he caught it one-handed. "Drink. I know yours ran out yesterday."

Before he could reply, heat signatures appeared on my HUD. Red blips approximately half a klick away, converging on our position from the northwest. Judging from the groans and rumbling rolling in like a thunderstorm, it was a horde - and this time, far more in number than the last few assaults combined.  
  
I turned to Bull, and he was already staring at me, with that damned grin plastered on his face. "Maybe later, Chief." He hefted his behemoth of a rifle. "We got some uninvited guests to deal with."

In spite of myself, I grinned.

~~~~

Five thermal clips.

I didn't know how much time had passed, or how many freaks I'd blasted to atoms, but I'd used up five thermal clips since the first of them appeared on the fringes of the garden plaza.

In the ammobox by my feet, only three clips remained.

The agonising hiss of steam hit my ears, and my Vindicator spat out an empty thermal clip. I know it clattered on the cement floor, but the _boom_  of small ordnance swallowed whatever sound it made.

Correction: two more clips left, for god-knows-how-many more Reaper freaks throwing themselves at us.

The two of us stubbornly held on to our position: Bull's Sabre chugging out projectiles in a constant _phoot-phoot-phoot_ , tearing through husks and staggering cannibals, while I picked off the stragglers with well-placed shots in the cranium or through their spindly legs.

Tonight, we were musicians, with instruments of doom in our hands, playing a symphony of destruction. The groans and hisses of Reaper troops formed our backing track, and all together, we were a grotesque orchestra performing in the plaza of horrors.

If only that were true. I would've given a limb for this to be a costume party gone wrong.

Bull's yell tore through my combat focus. "Chief, your right!"

Quickly, I sidestepped to my left and lowered my rifle. As I charged my omniblade, I panned my gaze to the right for the impending threat. Spotting a decaying skull peeking through the mound of rubble, I drew my omniblade - and skewered the husk that launched itself on me.

I kicked the corpse over the barrier with a wheeze, bruised ribs straining with the effort, and reassed the battlefield.

The first of hostiles had breached our safety perimeter - a bad sign. Though marauders were nowhere to be seen, cannibals were hanging out of rifle range now, peppering our position with their blasted hand-cannons, and it seemed like we failed to put a dent into the swarm of husks flooding our position.

All in all, a total snafu.

The ground shook with the impact of artillery shells close to my cover, throwing a shower of dust into my visor, the excess trickling down to my chestplate. Some of it wormed its way into my helmet's breather and I almost coughed.

"Bull, status?" I croaked, throat rubbed raw with the dust.

In between bursts of firing and taking cover, I did a hurried visual on my ammobox. It was empty.

Bull was on his knees, his back against the bench as he reloaded. "Out of clips, Chief. Five grenades' all I have left."

With single shots, I took down a pair of husks who'd scampered too close to the barricades - only for another pair to materialise right behind them.

Combat discipline kept my dismay in check. "Fuck this schnizz!" I yelled over the din, cracking open a husk's skull with the butt of my rifle. "Bull, you know the drill. Omnibl-"

Too late. I didn't hear the deathly whistle of a trio of cannon shots landing _awfully_ close to our position.

And I paid for my inattention with a polarised visor, before drowning in a sea of blackness.

~~~~

It was a miracle, I mused, as my eyelids cracked open.

My ears were ringing: a dull sound more suited for a machine than organic components. So were my limbs, but they quivered like red sand addicts in withdrawal.

I admit, it hurt to move. Even _thinking_  about lifting a finger sent jagged spikes of pain lancing down my spine.  
  
I remembered a bright flash before the darkness, and I supposed that explosion was responsible for leaving me curled in the dirt - thankfully /above/ the rubble, instead of being buried beneath it. I didn't move, not even an inch, because underlining the eerie silence were the hisses and moans of the _freaks_ , but they weren't as close as they used to before. Either that, or the blast had shredded my eardrums. Still, I didn't want to tip them off, so I played dead.

Once my vision cleared, I slowly scanned my surroundings through my cracked visor, latching on to familiar points to get a fix on my location - the headless statue in the plaza to my south, the apartment complex to my north, all the while studiously ignoring the slumped figure at the rightmost edge of my vision.

I didn't need to interface with Bull's hardsuit mainframe to know that he was dead.

Part of me wanted to scream. Part of me wanted to incinerate the Reaper freaks responsible to cinders with a flamer, and probably nuke them with a Cain.

The rest of me just wanted to die.

Absently, it registered that the explosion had flung me clear of the barricades and onto the plaza below. It had ripped my Vindicator out of my grasp, too.

Smoke choked my nosebuds, ash and dust clogged my nostrils. Moving my limbs felt like dragging the weight of Tuchanka along, and I slowly - _agonisingly_  - sat up, only for my back to slam against a mound of concrete chunks.

My arms flopped bonelessly by my sides, but by sheer will alone, I brought my right one close to my face. "Omnitool, activate," I said, praying hard that my Logic Arrest's voice control programs were intact.  
  
I heard the guttural whispers of a dying soldier, but it didn't occur to me that I was the one uttering them.

"Ac-access personal files. Password, breadsticks."

Half of my chestpiece from the ribs down had been eaten away, exposing the delicate fabric undersuit that peeled in places. More worryingly was the darkening patch of _something_  on my flank that had to be causing my lightheadedness. Score marks peppered the ceramic plates of my armor, and vaguely, I wondered how I wasn't dead yet, life support systems aside.  
  
My omnitool beeped. "Access audio file," I continued, the omnitool's interface blurring to varying hues of bright lights in my vision. "Designation, _home_. Command, Add audio and start recording."

Were the footfalls getting closer? I could barely hear myself speak. The keening pain under my skin was muddying my awareness.

"And tell-" the itch in my throat exploded in a hacking cough "-tell Luce that his sister loves him. Very much so."

Ten words. It couldn't have taken me more than a minute to record that and send a completed audio message to my family. Foolish of me to think that I could make it out of this hellhole, foolish of me to think that someone like Commander Shepard would storm in to blast the Reapers back into dark space where they belonged.

Even with my head dipped in exhaustion, I saw them: a few hunching forms lurching up the steps towards Outpost Bridge - and ultimately, towards the bodies of my fallen comrades. No doubt to retrieve them and turn them into Reaper slush.

Over my dead, _fucking_  body.

Cold fury, frigid and numbing, balled in my chest. "End recording," I rasped, feeling life in my limbs. "Attach audio file to email, and send it. Recipient, Mira Aranxes." _My mother._

I bit down on my tongue as I stumbled to my feet, before the scream could rip itself from my throat. I drew blood, flooding my mouth with the coppery aftertaste, but what was more pain, when my body was on the verge of degenerating into a writhing mess?

I didn't care if my left hand was hanging limp by my side, or if my synapses morphed into raging infernos with every step I took, but there was _no way_  in hell that I'd _let_ those Reaper freaks lay their mutated fingers all over my friends.

The husks' heads swiveled comically to face me as I approached with stilted steps, activating my omniblade that blazed as red as my anger.

They hesitated for the merest fraction of a second before they charged.

Energy pulses streaked through the air, singing like the songbirds that used to populate this plaza. My hardsuit's thermal regulators were too shot up to absorb the latent heat that warmed my skin, another aspect of the sundering pain that I forcibly channeled into destructive rage - grabbing, shoving, stabbing and kicking anything within my reach.

Husks, cannibals, marauders - I saw no distinction between them as I hurled myself like a cannonball into them. I wasn't _supposed_ to be capable of this vengeful rampage, but I was, the pain inside me fuelling the battle frenzy that consumed the entirety of my being. It was as if someone had deigned to smear blood over my eyes, because everything i saw through my visor was tinted red - but maybe that /was/ the Reaper gore I helped to create.

  
And when my omniblade shorted out, my helmet became a blunt instrument which I used to clobber.

There was a point when my wrist snapped - an ugly sound drowned out by the sharper _crack_  of bone as a backhand swipe in my face sent me spinning away into more rubble.

I landed _hard_ , location irrelevant as medigel seals on my skin cracked, be it those covering superficial cuts or plugging holes in my hardsuit. Perhaps I'd landed in a bed of spikes, because that certainly explained the sensation of needle-like pain shoving itself into my skin over and over.

White spots were dancing in my vision now, twinkling like stars in the night sky that I would never see again. By now, the euphoric state that had suffused my being was long gone, all traces of the adrenaline that fueled it completely squeezed out of my system.

In spite of the pitched whine in my ears, I could hear my ragged breaths echo loudly in my ears. It was morbidly comforting, grounding me as I stubbornly clung on to the last strands of consciousness.

As I lay here, on the detritus of my city, an incongruous sense of calm washed over me. It was a realisation, it was an affirmation, and that truth dispelled the weight piled on my shoulders.

I accepted that I was going to die.

A blurry, blue head crossed my tunnel vision. Its scarred features twisted in a feral snarl, and I let my eyelids slam shut for the last time. A pathetic gesture, trying to shield myself from the paralysing blow that was sure to come, since my arms were too dead to be raised.

But the blow never came.

Instead, air whistled in my ears and tingles shot through my body, succeeding in nudging my unresponsive form slightly forward.

 _Biotics_ , my brain sluggishly deduced, as a steady tempo of _rat-tat-tat_  picked up close by, intermingled with the death wails of those Reaper freaks. I longed to see the horror in their faces as the newcomers killed them, but I was beyond drained, staying conscious already taxing my battered body.

Someone was yelling, shouting phrases indiscernible to my ears, and it got louder by the moment.

Then, arms hooked under my forearms, the disorder in my head quieting as I was dragged along. Not because of the newly-injected medigel, no. It was the shock setting in.

"Hold on, soldier. You're going to be alright." The voice came from somewhere behind me. A feminine one.

No. I _won't_  be alright if Reaper freaks got to my squadmates.

What came out of my mouth instead was a weak moan.

I forced my eyes open, and a thin shaft of light flooded in. Disoriented, I saw mounds of gray, and trails of light streaking by.

"Holy hell, Lola. That was too close!"

The voice - _woman_  - stopped dragging me. I was losing myself fast. The darkness was crawling up my sides. I managed to hold it there.

Dark armour, I noticed. Shapes darted from cover to cover. _Human._

"No reward without risk, Vega."

A red stripe flanked with white. I'd recognise that anywhere. 

The voice was shouting this time. It hurt my ears. "Shepard, need some help here! I'm out of medigel."

 _Shepard_.

"Copy that, Ash. After I'm done."

She came. She really came. Shepard. Like what Command said. She /came/.

My head lolled to a side, eyes sliding shut again. The darkness returned, more insistent this time, and I let it.

I think I'll be alright. Like what the lady said.

I know we will be.


End file.
